A Fool's Hope
by Dark Satirist
Summary: Post DOFP: Charles finds Erik six months after the events in DC.


_So, uh, this is kind of a weird one-shot that I wasn't quite sure exactly where I was going with it at first. It's based off an interview I saw with Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy about Charles and Erik's relationship in DOFP to some extent, but then it just kind of morphed into some weird thing from there. _

_I am forever an optimist and wanted to fix the fact that Charles and Erik still weren't bros by the end of DOFP, so... this is my sad attempt to do that. Hopefully, you'll enjoy it, though. I kind of enjoyed writing it._

_I will admit that there probably are a lot of flaws in this, especially concerning the timeline of events in DOFP, so if there are any glaring errors, just pretend that's the way it happened in the movie, cause I'm not changing them. Sorry._

_Post DOFP: Charles finds Erik after the events in DC. _

**A Fool's Hope**

It seemed fitting, in an odd way, that Charles found Erik on a beach in South Florida. After all, their first fateful meeting so long ago had happened in the waters off the coast of Miami.

Erik stood a few yards away, the helmet on his head a dark silhouette in the dying sunlight. They were the only two on the beach, a fact Charles would be forever grateful for. While he doubted that the other man would be prone to violence at the moment, it was still better they did not have an audience for this.

The sand made for rough going in the wheelchair, but Charles had come too far to give up now. Sweat marked his brow and darkened his shirt, aided by the humid air and damp sea breeze.

He found himself suddenly right next to Erik, pulled by an invisible magnetic force. Instead of infuriating him like it once would have, Charles merely smiled as he looked up at the taller man.

"Thank you for that," he said, stopping himself before he could add _my friend_. "Beaches were not designed with the paralyzed in mind."

There was a brief moment of silence as Erik kept his eyes focused on the waves.

"What are you doing here, Charles?" he asked at long last.

A million responses burst through the telepath's head, not all of them very nice and most of them overdramatic. It struck Charles then that for all the wishing for this meeting he had done over the past six months, he had never once truly thought about what he would say to Erik.

"It seems as though your manners haven't improved over the past six months," Charles quipped before he could stop himself. "I'll keep that in mind."

Erik tore his eyes away from the ocean and stared down at Charles, surprised. Charles couldn't blame him—of all the things to say, that hadn't even made the list.

The metal bender sighed. "You were always too polite, Charles," he said. "Except for when you tried to kill me."

"Well, I had to pay you back for all the times you tried to kill me," Charles returned.

His eyes settled on the scar on Erik's neck. It had healed well, though there was a thick knot of white flesh above the taller man's jugular vein. The telepath wouldn't admit how relieved he was to know that the shot hadn't been deadly, nor would he admit to the vindictive satisfaction he felt to know that the man finally had some sort of physical scars to show the sins he had committed.

Erik's eyes flashed and he looked away again. "I have apologized for that," he said.

"Oh really?" Charles demanded, sarcasm coloring his voice. "I must have missed the card saying 'Sorry for dropping a stadium on you.' Tell me, did you send one of those to Logan as well?"

"Logan died," Erik said stiffly. "There was no one to send a card to."

Laughing at the death of a man who had only tried to help them save the world was the highly inappropriate thing to do. But Charles couldn't suppress the chuckle that worked its way free from his lips.

"Oh, Erik," he said. "How I've missed you."

It was the truth, no matter how twisted it may seem. While Charles couldn't make up his mind as to whether he hated Erik or loved him, the telepath had missed the metal bender.

Erik's neck twitched, as though he were about to look back, but he didn't move.

"You haven't missed me, Charles," he said, sadness plain in his voice.

"And you would know that, how?" Charles challenged softly. Before Erik had the chance to respond to the bitter words and the full weight behind them, the telepath changed topics. "Do you know what drew me to you that night, Erik? The night we met, I mean. Do you know why I dove in after you?"

"You read my mind," Erik intoned. "You saw what my plan was and you wanted to save me from myself. For all the good that's done."

The last sentence was whispered, barely audible above the roar of the waves, but the depression behind it broke Charles' heart.

"That's part of it," Charles said. "But not all of it."

"If this is going to be some long, inspirational story about how you saw the good in me when no one else did," Erik said harshly. "Then just forget it. I don't feel guilty about what I've done. I stand by the choices I've made, Charles. And while I regret…" He faltered for a moment, glancing briefly at Charles' chair before continuing. "While I regret the outcomes of my choices, I would make them all over again if given the chance."

"I tried to see the good in you once and it landed me in a wheelchair," Charles replied bluntly. The shocked look on Erik's face was pettily satisfying. "And then I tried convincing myself you were a monster and it landed me in a wheelchair all over again. So no, I did not come here tonight to convince you that you are a good person or a bad person. You are what you are, and you know what that is and you don't need me to approve or disapprove of your choices."

"Then why are you here?" Erik wanted to know.

"The night I found you in Miami was the night I realized I was not alone," Charles said in lieu of an answer. At the puzzled look on Erik's face, he added, "Your mind is a wonderful creation, Erik. You are so single tracked in your thinking, that you don't even realize the complex undertakings the rest of your brain is doing to help you achieve your goals. And you have all this power in you, power that you have only just begun to tap into. I saw the good and the bad and all of the potential you had that night. And you reminded me so much of myself, that I couldn't let you destroy yourself over Shaw. I had never felt another mind like yours Erik, and I have yet to find another one. Even with Cerebro, and all of the possibilities it contains…"

Erik became very focused on the waves once more. "Charles…" he began.

Charles shook his head. "Don't," he said. "Just… Let me finish. Because you are so much like me, it took me much longer than it should have to realize why you do the things you do."

"It's not that complicated, Charles," Erik said dully. "Humanity is weak and incapable of accepting change."

"So blowing them up is going to make them accept the change?" Charles retorted before he could fully stop himself.

The metal in Charles' chair vibrated dangerously as Erik replied, "It's kill or be killed. I have seen the world in ways you never will, old friend. Trust me when I say that it's better to be feared than accepted."

"You will never find peace if you rule with fear," Charles shot back. Before the other man could respond, he added, "Which is why you have never been at peace."

"Excuse me?" Erik asked frostily.

In all honesty, there really was no reason for Charles to be delicate here. After all, the taller man had been the one to put a bullet in Charles' back, abandon him for ten years, take his sister with him, blame him for everything bad that happened in the mutant community, drop a stadium on him, and then abandon him all over again. Any form of compassion or delicacy could have been thrown out the window after the first one, let alone the rest of it.

So, Charles was blunt.

"You're scared," he said. "You've been living in fear your entire life. Ever since your mother was killed, you have been terrified of what will happen if another Shaw happens. It's why you don't let anyone close to you, it's why you always choose the stupidest decisions possible, and it's why you're borderline suicidal. And the worst part of it all is that you have found enough justification for your actions to make you think you're doing the right thing."

"I am not scared," Erik replied forcefully, with just enough anger in his voice to prove that Charles had struck a nerve.

"You should be," Charles said. "Hell, I haven't been through half of the things you've been through and I'm fucking terrified, Erik."

Erik was silent.

Charles continued. "Look at what fear has done to the humans. When it got dark, they learned how to make fire. When others tried to take the fire from them, they killed the others. Then when fire proved too tame, they built archaic weapons, which eventually led to the creation of the atom bomb."

"Thank you," Erik interrupted, "For that wonderful history lesson. I feel so much better now."

The telepath glared. "I'm not done," he snapped. "So shut up and for once in your life, listen to me. The humans are terrified, Erik. They're terrified of us and what we mean for their survival. And like the rest of history has shown, humans will fight for their survival until the very last breath they have in their bodies. It's something you and they have in common."

"I could do without your insults, Charles," the metal bender growled.

"It's not an insult," Charles responded. "For the most part, I admire the humans. They have found ways to survive with all the odds stacked against them. Which is no different than what you have done, might I add. But they are going to continue to fight to their last breath. Erik. We cannot win this war against the humans. There are more of them than there will ever be of us."

"You said we were the next stage of evolution," Erik argued. "Surely, there will be more of us."

"One day, perhaps," Charles agreed. "But that day is not today. Are you really willing to risk our total extermination now and completely nullify that future?"

Erik was silent; Charles pressed on. "If you continue down this path you are on, you are effectively signing our death warrants, Erik. You may not care about your own life, or mine, or even Raven's anymore, but if you do learn to control your fear, you are destroying what little hope any of us have of surviving this."

The metal bender glared. "You keep preaching peace, but where has your pacifying ways gotten you?"

"I am where I am through a painful combination of placing trust in the wrong people and my own arrogance," Charles replied blandly. "I have learned from my mistakes and am working to move past them. Tell me, what are you doing about yours?"

When Erik didn't respond, the telepath added, "I admire you, because you have the strength to continue, even when there is no hope whatsoever. You are what the mutants need to survive this war. But you have to be stronger than your fears, Erik. You have to be stronger than _this_."

"What would you have me do, Charles?" Erik wanted to know.

"I want you to quit being a coward."

The words fell out of his mouth before Charles could stop them, but he found that he wasn't sorry. After everything Erik had done, if the metal bender couldn't stand to take the truth now and then, he needed to grow the hell up.

"Pot calling the kettle black, don't you think?" the taller man retorted. "After all, when things got tough for you, you gave up. When we needed you the most, you ran and hid."

"And I have paid for that," Charles said shortly. "It's time you start paying back the sins you've committed."

He turned to roll away, but Erik stopped him.

"That night, in the water," the metal bender began.

Charles looked back at him, raising an eyebrow in expectancy.

"Well?" he prompted, when the other man didn't continue.

Erik hesitated. "You weren't the only one who thought they had found someone like them," he said at last. "An equal, so to speak.

"What you did, running and hiding like that… I can't trust you after that. I'm sorry, Charles, but even with your reasons, I cannot condone what you've done. You call me a coward, you say that _I _have let _you_ down… You were the one person who I respected more than anything. The person you became after Cuba was a mockery of him. The man I knew was stronger than hiding away and running from the pain."

"I'm not the saint you make me out to be, Erik," Charles snapped.

"Nor I the pillar of courage and strength you need me to be," Erik returned. He continued before Charles could say anything. "We both made the mistake in believing far too much in the other person."

"We forgot to remember that we are, despite whatever powers we have, only human," Charles concluded.

"Not exactly the word choices I would make," Erik said shortly. "But yes."

They were both quiet, staring out at the now inky black water. The moon was beginning to rise, a small sliver of light in the distance.

Erik broke the silence. "So where do we go from here?"

"I came here to ask you to come home," Charles said softly.

"I don't have a home."

That was a bold-faced lie. They both knew all too well that the one place Erik had ever considered home—no matter how briefly—was the Westchester mansion.

Charles let it slide. "Then maybe it's time you find one," he suggested.

Even through the blasted helmet, the telepath could feel the metal bender's longing for that to be true.

"Erik," he said softly. "I can't say that I forgive you for everything you've done, but I am saying that I want to try."

Erik closed his eyes and turned away.

Charles' shoulders slumped, fearing that he had pushed too hard, and now Erik was lost to him forever.

Much to his surprise, Erik slowly lifted his hands to his head and removed the helmet. He let it fall to the sand with a gentle _thud_.

"I haven't forgiven you either," he said carefully. "No matter your reasons, you shouldn't have abandoned your morals like that. But," he added before Charles could say anything. "I am willing to try to move passed it."

Things were far from being okay—and perhaps they never would go back to the way they had been before Cuba, but maybe now they would be better.

It was a fool's hope, Charles knew, but it was the only hope he had. And as Erik helped him back to the parking lot, leaving the blasted helmet in the sand to be washed away with the tide, Charles felt the same cautious feeling taking root in the metal bender's mind as well.


End file.
